Ratan Tata, who put India’s Tata Group on the global map, dies at 86
Ratan Tata, the former Tata Group chair who put a staid and sprawling Indian conglomerate on the global stage with a string of high-profile acquisitions, has died, the Tata Group said in a statement late on Wednesday. He was 86.
Tata, who ran the conglomerate for more than 20 years as chair, had been undergoing intensive care in a Mumbai hospital.
Ratan Tata “was a visionary business leader, a compassionate soul and an extraordinary human being,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on social media platform X.
After graduating with a degree in architecture at Cornell University, he returned to India and in 1962 began working for the group his great-grandfather had founded nearly a century earlier.
He worked in several Tata companies, including Telco, now Tata Motors Ltd, as well as Tata Steel Ltd, later making his mark by erasing losses and increasing market share at group unit National Radio & Electronics Company.
